Matthew's Journal

June calendar SAL

( May crafts )

This Zelda-inspired soulslike APRG starts you out as a little fox stranded on a beach with no weapons, no interface, no intro or tutorial or cutscenes or any indication of who you are or what you're supposed to do. As you start to run around the stylized, colorful fantasy world (the only thing you can do at first) you start finding pages of the game manual—but it's mostly written in a language you can't understand. The answers to all your questions are in there, but it's up to you to puzzle over the illustrations, interpret the clues, and discover how everything in the game works, from combat and items to story and worldbuilding.



It's been said that the best way to play Tunic is to go in knowing nothing, which I did, but I think that makes a lot of assumptions about what kind of gameplay is going to be in a given person's wheelhouse. This is a game for people who are equally into action and puzzles, and want a challenge in both areas. It's tough but fair, and rewards thorough exploration and creative thinking as well as quick reflexes and combat skill.

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Tunic is $29.99 USD on various platforms, but the PC/Mac version is currently half off on Humble!

And I slept all day, too. I'm gonna start this post, but I'll finish it when I get back from this shift, so by that time I will either be awake or even more sleepy.

Edit: I was awake! But I hung out with E all day, so.

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I was sold on E.Y. Zhao's Underspin by this post via sleepnoises -- I also love books with Big Hole in the middle that do interesting things with POV! I also love a book that tells you at the beginning that the protagonist is already dead and then lets you sit with that tension for the next however many hundred pages. Pre-haunted by the protag, if you will.

I didn't quite love Underspin, as it turned out, but I do think it's really interesting as a structural project. We start at the funeral of almost-great table tennis prodigy Ryan Lo, his parents waiting for his coach to show up, which he doesn't. Then we go back in time and begin tracking Ryan's career through the eyes of various people who intersect with him over the course of his twenty-five years -- some who spend years with him on major life and career-altering enterprises, and others who cross his path for a day, a weekend, a single table tennis tutoring session at the local club. (My favorite POV character is the very elderly woman whose daughter is forcing her and her husband to take table tennis As A Retirement Activity despite their absolute lack of interest.)

Each of these chapters essentially functions as a little short story about a person who is at least tangentially involved with table tennis. They're all caught up in their own lives and problems, and also Ryan is also there, visible and attention-grabbing, handsome and talented and apparently destined for success, a perfect lightning rod for whatever insecurities the POV character happens to be feeling at that time. Through the structural distortion effect, though, it increasingly becomes clear that there's something wrong about Ryan's relationship with his coach, and the unease of that runs through the book, which began at Ryan's funeral.

I did kind of want more of a structural distortion effect ... from the description I was expecting a series of first-person narratives, The Moonstone-like, but on a prose level most of the book is actually written in more or less the same third-person MFA short story style, with a couple of exceptions. I didn't really click with it and it did detract a bit from the tension for me; I wanted a little more psychological horror, a little less wistful melancholy. But I think that's mostly an expectation-reality mismatch. I did like that there's never really a 'gotcha' moment, that by the time some truths are revealed you are not surprised by them, and that everything stays deeply ambiguous, deeply ambivalent, through the end. Also, there's no question that the book absolutely understands The World of Table Tennis.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Grace Lin’s Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods, a compendium of the stories behind various dishes frequently found on menus in American Chinese restaurants (plus a few less-common dishes that just have a cool story, like Buddha Jumps Over the Wall). Loved this! As always in Lin’s work, the illustrations are gorgeous, and she gives a great sense of the flavor experience of many of the dishes, too.

I also finished Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Looking For is in the Library, translated by Alison Watts. Like Aoyama’s other books, each chapter follows a different character who is at a turning point in their lives. All of them go to the same library in the local community, and find unexpected guidance in the books that the librarian suggests, which helps them make changes both large and small. One girl starts to learn simple cooking so she can make her own lunches; a new mother realizes she needs to find a more family-friendly workplace if she is going to successfully balance raising her toddler and pursuing her career as an editor.

And now I’ve read all the Aoyama novels that have been translated into English. A bit bummed to be out, but happy to report that another translation is coming out in July: Matcha on Monday, which going by the title might be a companion novel to Hot Chocolate on Thursday? We shall see.

What I’m Reading Now

Onward in The Romanovs! Paul has been assassinated just like his dad (well, except his wife wasn’t behind the assassination, so maybe not JUST like his dad), leaving his son Alexander to deal with the Napoleonic Wars. After a brief honeymoon period between autocrats (“I’m happy with Alexander; I think he is with me,” Napoleon mused to Josephine. “Were he a woman, I think I’d make him my lover”), Alexander pulled back from the alliance, and now the infuriated Napoleon is marching on Russia. Hell hath no fury like a dictator scorned.

(Side note: aside from England and France, every single nation in Europe seems to have changed sides in the Napoleonic Wars at LEAST once. I’m starting to understand Hitler’s conviction in World War II that the Allies would inevitably fall out with each other if he could just hang on long enough. Wishful thinking yes, but wishful thinking with the entirety of European history up to and including Russia’s abrupt departure from World War I to back it up.)

What I Plan to Read Next

I found Patricia McKillip’s The Riddle-Master of Hed and Harpist in the Wind in the Little Free Library next to the farmer’s market, so I guess I’ll be giving the Riddle-Master trilogy a try. Full disclosure, I did not care for The Forgotten Beasts of Eld when I read it, but that was back in high school so it is entirely possible that I have come around on McKillip since then.

1. Dear Annie: My 19-year-old daughter -- she'll be 20 in July -- is a sophomore at Charleston College. She came home for spring break and informed my husband and me that she had found her soul mate at Charleston, and they plan to marry this summer. He's 24 and a graduate student teaching English.

She wants to go back to school in the fall as husband and wife. How they plan to support themselves we have no idea. Should we try to talk her out if it? We've already told her we think it's a mistake. -- Disapproving

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2. Dear Annie: I was doing some spring cleaning and found some receipts in the pockets of one of my husband's sports coats for some large purchases for his sports memorabilia collection, to the tune of $5,000 to $20,000 each. I was in shock. I don't have a problem with supporting him and his hobbies, but he should have discussed it with me first, correct? What should I do? -- Dumbfounded

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This past weekend, our team went to the Pittsford Regatta on the Erie Canal just outside Rochester. It's a favorite regatta, which is a little funny because just a few years back it was hard to convince my masters teammates to participate, and now we have a big crew that goes. This year the regatta weather didn't fully cooperate; when we arrived it was warmish, then it started to sprinkle, the sprinkle turned to rain and blowing wind, and temperatures dropped through the day. It has been a while since I've had such a rainy regatta experience, and I've definitely forgotten how to manage myself in the midst of it all. Being out in the elements all day is different from being out in the elements for just a rowing practice. Overall our spirits weren't too dampened; boats had decent races and we didn't have any serious misadventures (this time!).

I've started to think of my singles races as "scouting" opportunities.

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Happy birthday, redroanchronicles!

My (work) laptop is so slow today. Maybe it's too hot (it's over 90°F today, which I'mjxkiy to find manageable with no air conditioning, but it makes myself known). Maybe it's also struggling after the long weekend we both had.

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Today we went up to Danville.

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Thank you kindly to the wonderful kass for sharing the link to this Purim Spiel! "Heated Rabbi-ry" vid on Instagram. לאַפינג אויס הויך

Black Jewels A:tlA fic.

Additionally: wondering how it is that there are 80,000 fics for this fandom and only two sedoretu fics. This canon is MADE for it. The damn situation is practically PAVED with bricks (fics?) of gold. HOW.

And the two fics are, of course, not Zutara fics, which is my pairing pref. I'd go Katara/Zuko/Sokka/Suki tbh rather than the four benders, because one of the ways LeGuin set up sedoretu relationships was for inheritance lines - a brother and a sister marry and share their partners.

EXHIBIT A: Southern Water Tribe sibs.

Especially when a lot of the fanon I like around the SWT involves a less restrictive sexuality before marriage (but fidelity after).

...see? Like I said: plotting.

Also: heeeeeelp.

Enjoyable! Often relevant! So far so good :D

My notes behind cut.

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